The number of businesses allowing their employees to work remotely has increased significantly in many years. While initially introduced as a COVID-19 precaution, this has proven to be beneficial in more ways than one.
After all, it can reduce overheads, improve work-life balance and employee satisfaction and can even increase productivity rates!
Furthermore, there are plenty of steps that you can take to ensure your remote business succeeds, whether you’ve been in business for several years or are only just getting around to turning your passion into profit.
Ensure you know how to lead a remote team. If you’ve been in business for some time, you likely think you know everything you need to know about leadership. However, running an in-person team requires an entirely different strategy to running a remote one due to the fact that the way in which you communicate and interact with each other changes.
As such, you should ensure that you know how to manage a workforce remotely so that you can continue to be the kind of boss your employees need.
Make use of the right technologies. It goes without saying that technology plays a pivotal role in the success of your remote business – after all, you’d hardly be able to keep running your business without it!
However, this means that you’re truly spoilt for choice when it comes to finding tools that can help you take your business to the next level. For example, if you’re struggling with cash flow and feel like you spend an endless amount of time chasing late invoices, then you should invest in tools and tech that allow you to accept multi-split bulk payments. This also makes it much easier for your customers to pay you.
Prioritze effect time management. As mentioned above, many businesses that have switched to remote operations have reported a spike in productivity. For example, one study found that “remote employees perform an additional 62 hours (1.5 weeks) of work annually because they experience fewer interruptions.”
However, this does not mean that effective time management comes easily to those working from home. This means that you should put plans in place to support your workers when it comes to effective time management. For example, you may want to invest in scheduling software that helps them to divide their time equally between tasks while also sending them alerts when a deadline is approaching.
Don’t forget about team building. Your employee’s ability to work collaboratively or as a team will play a critical role in the long-term success of your business. After all, while they may all be working on individual tasks, they’re also working toward shared goals. As such, this means that you need to ensure you build strong team morale, which can be a little challenging when they are not interacting with each other face to face.
One way in which you can achieve this goal is by hosting virtual team-building sessions. This way, they can get to know each other outside of the work they are carrying out, such as by playing a range of zoom games. This way, they form stronger relationships moving forward.